Microsoft To Sell Its Own Windows RT Tablet

Glasswire writes "ComputerWorld reports that Microsoft will announce a Microsoft-branded tablet on Monday running the Win RT (ARM-based) subset version of Win 8. MSFT choose not to offer a x86 Win 8 version, which could have given them a performance advantage over ARM-based Apple iPads. A PCMag opinion piece titled 'A Microsoft Tablet Would Be Dumb' says, 'The only real reason to introduce a Microsoft-branded tablet is because Microsoft couldn't get anyone else to make a Windows RT tablet.' No reaction yet from Microsoft's system OEM customers that it will now be competing with."

Re:This summary is terrible

[Daniel Dvorkin]

"MSFT choose"? Seriously?

Using business and other organizational names as collective rather than singular nouns is more common in British than in American English, but both usages are increasingly acceptable on both sides of the Atlantic. Your objection is silly, unless of course you're complaining about the use of the stock ticker symbol in place of the company name, which I agree is an abomination.

Re:x86 please

[l0ungeb0y]

No -- you want administration tools that you can use to manage an enterprise's corral of tablets and smartphones. Surprisingly, Apple offered this for the iPhone years ago as part of their OS X Server package that allowed for the adding/removing of apps and permissions for all registered devices on the network. Not sure if it still exists in Lion Server -- but it stands to reason it should.

Expecting them to come up with a brand new Tablet OS just for your IT dept needs did give me a chuckle though.
But rest assured, I'm sure they'll rip-off Apple (as usual) and come up with a device administrator for you to play with.

Re:This isn't a troll just an observation

[UnknowingFool]

I don't think "suddenly" quite sums it right. MS has been making Windows tablets for years but has had to change their strategy. Slowly turning behemoth is more descriptive of MS. They've failed to sell many tablets. In fact in 2010 at CES, Ballmer stood in front an array of tablets and gushed about the year of the tablet [pcworld.com]. He was right but it would be the iPad that Apple launched a month later and not any Windows ones.

Re:Huh?

[DanFelixPierce]

"There are 30 million active Xbox Live accounts, which must make them a great deal of pure profit."

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/fy12/Q2/default.aspx [microsoft.com] Here you can look at their financial statements for the last few years. Check the line item that shows the Operating income for the Entertainment and Devices Division on the statments going back to 2004. I put together a table:
2004 (1,220)
2005 (391)
2006 (1,284)
2007 (1,892)
2008 497
2009 169
2010 618
2011 1,324
At the end of fiscal year 2011, the entertainment and devices division was still about $2.2 billion in the hole. Now the first two quarters of 2012 were good( a total of $880 million) but look here: http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY12/Q3/default.aspx [microsoft.com] They lost $229 million this past quarter. That means they are still about $1.5 billion in the hole on this little Xbox venture. And with their Online services consistently losing money( in the billions), they better hope Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 are huge this year.

Re:Huh?

[blind biker]

Google+ certainly didn't fail. It's a social network with tens of millions of users - one of the largest, currently. Most of them share Limited or Extended Circles, so a two-bit analyst will jump to the conclusion that they aren't active, but you see, Google+ has this thing called "circles", and enables users to share only to the circles they want.

Google wave is an integral part of Google+

Knol was killed by Google, though it didn't really fail. The blame falls squarely on Google, no doubt, but it was a fairly successful venture otherwise.

All the other products and services you list don't amount to a hill of beans and aren't worth the electrons to talk about them.

Missing from your list are little things such as Android, Google Books and Google Scholar.
I guess you never heard of Android, before...

Re:Huh?

[ilguido]

Just completely forget that there is, oh I don't know, the XBOX.

The whole XBOX business has been a cash sink for Microsoft. Don't forget that the Entertainment division collects the royalties from Android makers (that is hundreds of millions for free) and still it is in the red ( http://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/xbox.jpg [geekwire.com] ).